


Unaccompanied

by misterwoodhouse



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Free! Kink Meme, M/M, Music, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2101089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misterwoodhouse/pseuds/misterwoodhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, words will never suffice. Rin knew this was painfully true; the proof was hiding in his duffel bag bearing secrets he could never speak. </p><p>A violin was a heavy burden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unaccompanied

**Author's Note:**

> Vivaldi's Four Season Winter and Summer Concertos, and Akira's "Aoki Tsuki Michite(蒼き月満ちて)" really helped me write this (as well as an anxiety driven night of caffeine). I would suggest listening to either while you read!

Rin's heart was beating loud in his ears; a vicious pounding that raked through his body and made his hands quiver. He could feel Nitori's presence almost painfully behind him, the attentive and kind boy seated at his desk studiously reading. It was late, and Rin wanted anything but his persistent questions tonight. Rin grabbed his duffel bag from the ground, internally cursing with grit teeth at the peculiarly hollow clang it made when it hit the bed frame in his haste. But he fled quickly without checking whether or not Nitori was intrigued by the possible contents of his bag, or if he could tell Rin was in a rush.

 

Regardless of Nitori's possible questions, Rin was in a rush. He walked quickly down the hall and nearly flew down the staircase. If anybody saw him, they might presume he was going to the pool. But just as Rin approached the entrance to said pool, he walked right by it and pushed his way through a set of doors marked "Exit."

 

The cold night breezed quickly by his skin, cooling the flushed and agitated feeling of being watched. He moved beyond the neat paths that surrounded the school, and wandered into a thin lining of verdure just dense enough to hide him. The bushes tickled against his bare ankles, whispering sweet welcomes as he found a place under a low tree. The lush leaves cloaked him from the lights at the side of the building, allowing him the cover of nightfall. Rin leaned against the tree, taking a deep breath and lightly placing his duffel bag down. He sunk to the ground, and unzipped his bag, reaching inside for a hard, black case. Upon opening the case, a glossy brown violin caught the slightest gleam of the lights. Rin's hand caressed the surface, a sigh of relief escaping his lips. Taking up the bow in his hands, and tucking the violin under his chin, Rin began to play.

 

The first few sounds came drawn out and slow, like the stretching of tense muscles, an internal unwinding that resonated deep within Rin's body. Sometimes Rin wondered why he held off these sessions of self-indulgence. When he first discovered that playing the violin felt like speaking in another voice, that is was a different sort of cathartic expression than swimming to him, almost like a deep tremor of his captive self reverberating in the open air—it tore him apart.

 

He was in Australia at the time, nursing the wounds of disappointment and isolation in the long hallways of his boarding school. The bitter tears were running hot down his cheeks, holding back sobs as he bit his lip and curled his little hands into fists. It was so miserable seeing his name fall so low on the rankings, continuously failing to garner notice or even truly compete. It felt as though he were drowning instead of swimming, his body simply floundering about in the lanes. The other kids laughed, applauded their friends and their own achievements. As he watched them, Rin didn't want to admit that he missed the company of one particularly quiet blue-eyed boy. Someone to talk to—or maybe at—and cling around; someone to make blush all the way up to their ears.

 

As he walked by one set of closed door, he heard the most magnificently painful cry ever uttered. It struck right through him, beckoning forth the sobs he tried so miserably to stifle. The tears doubled in force, the second wave of a vicious storm. Rin remained enclosed within that moment of sorrow, the complete manifestation of misery for that brief moment, until the once human cry drew itself out into an inhuman tremble.

 

It was coming from behind the doors. Rin walked cautiously towards the music. The tremulous song seemed to speak straight from his core, bearing truths he kept locked behind his eyes. He leaned against the wooden barrier between this new insubstantial self, falling to his knees and peeking through the crack between the doors.

 

Inside, a young girl played the violin. Her body swayed as she worked the bow over the strings. But to Rin, the world inside was nearly amorphous. The movements and sound absolutely riveted him, leaving him preoccupied by his own tumultuous anguish echoed by this violinist's private concert. He sobbed against the door as his tears obscured the sight, like squinting under the salty sting of ocean water.

 

"Rin Matsuoka!" A voice called down the hall, but it melded into the violin's song. Rin paid the additional voice no mind.

 

It had been the coach seeking Rin out. He asked a few questions at first, but Rin's lack of coherent response left him at a lost. The coach settled with ordering Rin to clean up and return to his dorm.

 

In the silence of his room, Rin thought of the violin. The sound had sunk into him; inextricably binding its poignant calls to his internal self. He fervently began lessons afterwards, taking the oddest hours for lessons in order to fit with his swimming schedule. The teachers applauded him; they praised him exuberantly. They said he was Paganini reborn. If Rin weren’t so flattered, he would have laughed.

 

But as time went on, Rin became overcome by a sense of demure when he played. It felt as though he were bearing his secrets, allowing his listeners into the privacy of his fragile heart. Because the violin seemed to complete him. But in another way, it expanded him.

 

He couldn't bear to open the doors to their criticism, allow them to know his private worries. Rin stopped his lessons, but practiced with feverish compulsion on his own. He left Australia with another world hiding in his suitcase. He never breathed a word of it to anyone. He only ever played alone.

 

The tears streamed down his cheek before he knew it, falling onto the violin as he played to himself under the tree. The final note quivered into the air. His hand shook as he lowered the bow. It was time to call it a night.

 

 

In a very deep place hiding somewhere between horsehair and violin strings, Rin knew that swimming had transformed into an act of drowning. No, Rin wasn’t losing his form; his swimming bore no outward resemblance to the faltering child that failed to understand his own limits years ago. And rather than stagnant, his times were well improved, even remarkable when held against those of the team’s.  

 

Nitori gushed about it all through practice, and even captain Mikoshiba commented on Rin’s impeccable swimming. However, their praise faded out before it could ring in his ears; like words spoken underwater, trapped within the air bubbles that floated up from their lips and escaped to the water’s surface, their kind words never made it across the space between them.

 

That’s where Rin found his problem—it was the water itself feasting upon his prone mind. Every dive into the pool was submergence, bitter resignation to its overwhelming force. Each stroke he attempted to carve into the water became a forsaking of his body, losing himself like salt in a vast ocean. He was amorphous distress; lost to the water’s turbulent and incomprehensible whims.

 

Anything with a remote resemblance to coherency or a semblance of his former self was only a hostile reaction at this point. Every joint practice he had the misery of suffering through stirred searing indignation within his core. Haru swimming in the other lane was a mocking display of his rival’s complete union to the water; his presence was seeped into every drop that worked to snuff out Rin’s churning frustration, an attempt to pacify him with Haru’s apathetic superiority. He swam his laps panting roughly, desperately fighting back against the thought.

 

And out of the pool, Haru’s eyes sang deceitful temptation and cold indifference, a premature dirge from the siren’s lips. Rin cursed under his breath whenever he saw those eyes, looked too close for far too long and was terribly displeased with what he found.

 

Soon enough, Rin found himself taking his violin to practice. It made him a little nervous to think of it hiding in plain sight; a little too close to foreign ears—as though it sang his heart without being played. He trembled ever so slightly when he packed the glossy instrument case into his duffel bag early in the morning; listening to the birds chirp, and share his secret amongst themselves. The light of sunrise peaking through their blinds brought dewy sweat to the back of his neck. At every creak of Nitori’s bed just above him, he flinched and cursed.

 

Today’s practice ran particularly slowly. He felt like he was swimming his way back to Australia, and finding just as much solace climbing out of the pool at joint practice, as he would years ago in Australia. He ran his hand down his face every time he felt tempted to glance towards Haru, exasperation soaking through the gesture and falling through his lips as a sigh. Soon enough he would find himself swimming another round of laps, feeling another equally poignant sort of frustration underneath the water’s surface as he felt above.

Instead of looking beside him to see Haru’s cold face, Rin looked to the clock. _Five minutes left_.

 

He almost smiled at the realization, and slipped into the locker rooms before anyone saw him. He needed to shower quickly, pack up his things and find a room. Rin wasn’t sure how many more practices he could swim through with the Iwatobi team hovering behind him. He needed space to think; he needed to play a bit.

 

Not too far from the pool’s exit, there was an empty room Rin was sure no one needed now. Daylight was resigning to night; most of the Samezuka students were either off campus for the weekend or out in the city. Only the swim team found themselves entrenched within the school’s walls, upholding a standard of excellence only Seijuro really cared for on these days.

 

Rin walked into the room, closing the door behind him and hearing the last distant sounds of practice fade behind him. It was a small study with books lining the walls; a leather wingback chair was nestled in the corner of the room, in front of a wide window framed by velvet curtains. He sat on the chair and pushed back the curtain to look out the window. The sun was setting somewhere he couldn’t see, but the sky still bore the wound of its departure. A stark red sliced the center of its heavenly expanse, and diffused into the merciless blue of night.

 

Rin took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself as best he could. It was useless, though; he knew the task of calming belonged to his violin. He opened the case and assumed his stance, closing his eyes to savor the first note, drawn out like nails over his skin. As it trembled up through the bow, within the hollow cavity of the violin, reverberating in the room, surrounding him as sunk through his burdensome flesh, Rin trembled along with it. It died into the brittle silence; stillness claimed the room for a moment. In the catalogue within his mind, Rin searched for a song that sounded like a storm. Yes, it began slowly. It swung over the strings like the lazy rock of a boat for a few lines of music, almost mournful with its pace and pitch. But Rin couldn’t settle with that sort of ease. His fingers caressed the violin’s neck with smooth grace; his body gained momentum with the bow and swung like a pendulum over the strings, ushered forward by the inertia of nerves stumbling out of his heart, pushing him full force into the song.

 

The high notes screeched like sparks—screaming up the scales with a sour sting Rin could taste filling his mouth. He tore out a violent rage over the strings; playing martelé down to his bones. The violin’s cries struck his skin with every stifled note; enlivening every inch of his being and dissolving the physical form that dared to sink, that dared to bleed and sob. The feel and sound of wordless poignancy filled the room, filled the mind flooded with a taunting gaze; melted the compressed being feeling the pain of oncoming tears shortening his breaths and clutching his throat. An ache from his wrist and blooming in his fingers pulsated into a turbulent vibrato, pushing him back and forth on a ceaseless wave of sound and sentiment. Beyond the ache of his body and the storm of the violin’s truth, there was nothing.

 

 

He was nothing but a nameless feeling; a composition without a title—clarity achieved through nearly incomprehensible agony. He bit his lip against the name emerging on his tongue, attempting to reach his ears. Rin melded himself to the violin—only truly present when it moaned and sobbed its song.

 

 

He could feel himself in the strings, wound up and stretched to a perfect pitch across the fragile bridge with every turn of the pegs. His essence quivered in the smooth construction of the bow, the tension of the horsehairs strung between the tip and the heel; his heart beat within the wooden body, a cradle of misery and pleasure.

 

_Rin!_

 

The force of a foreign voice called Rin back to his flesh. He emerged with a startled swipe of his bow, blinking away the tears that had caught on his lashes and reduced the room to a blurry, surreal tableau. From the hazy image, a face hovered close to his. Deep blues scanned his expression, the heart-shaped face framed by black hair. The boy was leaning against the armrests, caging Rin within his seat with the iron bars of his body.

 

Rin’s voice felt weak; he wanted to bite out Haru’s name and push him away. He could feel the drops of water falling from the boy’s wet hair, his chest was bare and his swimsuit was still on. Rin wanted to threaten him for standing so close, and simply sink back into the insubstantial realm of music. The feeling of moisture sliding down his cheeks reminded him that he was still crying. He wanted to leave.

 

“—Haru.“ Rin only breathed his name pitifully.

 

 “What’s wrong, Rin?”

 

He still couldn’t understand the tone of Haru’s voice. He closed his eyes and turned away. He swallowed thickly to reclaim the capacity for words, for strength. “Leave, Haru.”

 

“I didn’t know you played.”

 

Rin flinched. He clutched the violin. “Why would you?”

 

“I don’t know.” Somewhere in Haru’s voice, there echoed a distant sorrow. Rin felt a hand slip into his hair; but with the violin alive in his arms, he only remained still. The feeling of Haru’s thumb rubbing under his eyes made Rin look at him again. They paused and stared at one another, a quivering insecurity either reflected from Rin’s eyes onto Haru’s, or Haru’s own truth breaking the surface. Haru’s breath felt hot against his tear-streaked face; he hadn’t noticed when he had gotten quite so close. Just before the soft skin of their lips touched, Haru whispered sweet words that burned into Rin’s mind.

 

“I’m sorry, Rin.”

 

He kissed him then, moving with a gentle patience that made Rin melt. Rin offered his own reconciliation, using a painstaking delicacy as his lowered the violin to the ground and responded to Haru’s contrition. Heat churned between them like magma, making even stubborn stone pliant and docile. Everything was slow-moving time, drawing out their obstinate hearts and folding them together. Rin clutched Haru’s shoulders, bringing down his nails on the exposed and damp skin. Haru groaned as the pain blossomed red behind his eyes, pleading with his lips as he slipped his tongue into Rin’s mouth. Rin recoiled then, gasping, as he emerged from the kiss, startled and enfeebled by Haru’s urgency.

 

They panted as they gazed at one another. Haru watched as Rin’s eyes swirled with a rush of emotions, attempting to decipher the turmoil of the violin’s song that had beckoned Haru like a tide under the moon’s spell. He pushed back Rin’s hair, and leaned in to leave a kiss where another tear began to gather on his cheek.

 

He spoke against Rin’s skin, his eyes closed; a promise trembled and resonated in the room. “Don’t play alone, Rin. Play for me.”

 

_I’ll listen._

**Author's Note:**

> I really wasn't sure how to end this; so that is all. I felt emotionally fulfilled writing this. I also don't actually play the violin, so if something seems off, I do apologize. 
> 
> If I were better at this, I would have alluded to the fact that Haru plays piano in this story and wants them to play together; maybe next time.


End file.
